Northeast Utilities Wasn’t Prepared for October Snow Storm

By Jim Polson and Julie Johnsson -
Dec 2, 2011

Northeast Utilities (NU) failed to
adequately prepare for a record October snowfall that cut
electricity to 70 percent of its Connecticut customers and it
lacked executive leadership during power restoration, according
to an independent study.

Connecticut Light & Power, Northeast Utilities’ subsidiary,
“was not prepared for an event of this size,” Witt Associates
LLC said in a report commissioned by Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy, a Democrat. The assessment of Northeast Utilities and
UIL Holdings Corp. (UIL)’s responses to the storm was issued today.

More than 3 million homes and businesses in the Northeast
lost power after snow toppled trees onto power lines. About
861,000 Connecticut customers were left in the dark and some
went without electricity for more than a week as CL&P struggled
to respond to the largest power failure in its history.

“The extent to which they were unprepared is troubling,”
Malloy said of CL&P today at a press conference in Hartford,
Connecticut. Malloy promised tighter storm preparation rules and
better coordination by public agencies.

Neither Connecticut Light & Power nor other utilities in
the region requested crews from other states “until the snow
started to fall,” Charles Fisher, a Witt vice president,
testified today before a panel investing the response.

Heavy Snowfall

Power lines might have been repaired faster had utilities
sought help during an Oct. 28 conference call of the Northeast
Mutual Assistance Group, an organization of utilities in the
U.S. and Canada. None of the utilities on the call asked for
help, when weather forecasters at the time were expecting
snowfall sufficiently heavy to snap limbs, Fisher said.

The state panel formed by Malloy is investigating the
utilities’ responses to the Oct. 29 snowstorm and to Tropical
Storm Irene, which struck in late August. State Attorney General
George Jepsen asked regulators to review CL&P’s response.

“There are several areas of opportunity identified within
the report and we have already started addressing some of
them,” Charles Shivery, chairman and chief executive officer of
Northeast Utilities, said in a statement. “We are working
quickly to incorporate this feedback into our emergency response
plan.”

CL&P had prepared for about 100,000 customers to lose
power, the report said. It wasn’t prepared to manage the number
of workers necessary for a major storm, the report said. Plans
should accommodate a 10-fold increase in field staff after
storms, Fisher said today.

Insufficient Boots

“They failed to have enough boots on the ground when their
worst-case scenario was compounded by a factor of eight,”
Malloy said.

CL&P misled customers by underestimating how many days it
would take to restore power, the report said. The company
announced that 99 percent of customers would have power back by
Nov. 6 “even though they appeared to know” that Nov. 9 was
more probable, the report said.

In addition, the state’s largest utility “did not provide
sufficient executive leadership during this restoration effort,
allowing one individual to oversee the restoration effort, serve
as primary liaison at the state emergency operations center and
be the public spokesperson,” according to the report.

Butler Resignation

Jeffrey Butler, president and chief operating officer of
CL&P, spoke on behalf of the company at storm-related press
conferences. He resigned Nov. 17 because “it would be a
challenge for him to continue in his current position,” Shivery
said in a telephone interview at the time. More management
changes may follow, he said.

Northeast Utilities asked “an awful lot” of Butler,
Fisher said.

The report makes 27 recommendations, including that CL&P
improve its planning procedures and communication. State and
local authorities should coordinate better with utilities, Witt
concluded.

Northeast Utilities announced Nov. 29 it had tripled to $30
million funds set aside for customers who lost power after the
snowstorm. The company hired Kenneth Feinberg, the lawyer who
oversaw payments to families of victims of the Sept. 11
terrorist attacks, to administer the fund.

The company, which is based in Springfield, Massachusetts,
and run from Hartford, Connecticut, is in the process of buying
Boston-based Nstar.

United Illuminating

Northeast Utilities fell 1.5 percent to $34.34 at the close
in New York. The shares have risen 7.7 percent this year. UIL
Holdings, which has about 325,000 Connecticut customers, fell
1.6 percent to $34.21.

UIL is “comfortable” with the report’s recommendations,
said Michael West, a spokesman for the New Haven, Connecticut-
based company.

“We are implementing many of the things that have been
discussed,” West said in a telephone interview today. United
Illuminating, its utility subsidiary, filed a new emergency
preparedness plan with Connecticut regulators yesterday.

UIL plans to invest $10 million to $15 million in
technology during the next three years to give it quicker and
more accurate information about power blackouts, he said. The
company had power back to its customers on Nov. 2.